1. Field
The present invention relates to a dual stack module controlling apparatus, more particularly, to a dual stack module controlling apparatus for low power consumption.
2. Background
With spread of internet protocol version 6 (IPv6), various communication devices such as a network card is able to process IPv6 data as well as conventional IPv4 (internet protocol version 4) data.
Dual stack, tunneling and header translation have been used for the data processing of IPv4 and IPv6. Out of them, the dual stack may include a stack for processing IPv4 and a stack for processing IPv6.
The IPv4 stack module and the IPv6 stack module may be realized as an embedded system and an embedded device provided in most of the network equipments. In this case, the network equipments cannot help but be enlarged and complex. Because of that, a dual stack apparatus has to be a disadvantage of high power consumption and high resource consumption, compared with a single stack apparatus. The disadvantage will be described.
The dual stack module supports a dual mode and a single mode. The dual mode activates entire stacks for an IPv4 address and an IPv6 address to be assigned to the dual mode. The dual stack module has a disadvantage of activating entire stacks even in an incommunicable status because an IP address fails to be assigned thereto. In the single mode, one of IP version stacks can be selected. However, the stacks having the unselected IP versions have to be controlled appropriately for efficient resource management.
Power consumption may weigh heavily in an apparatus using a limited resource such as a conventional M2M (machine-to-machine) equipment or sensor or an embedded system requiring low power consumption. Also, the dual stack equipments desperately need low power consumption as a base of green technology has been expanded in almost all of technologies.